Neel Mehta wrote:12. Can you name the TV series based on the titles of 3 of its episodes?

C) Investors Dinner; Stennheiser-Pong Wedding Reception; Steve Guttenberg's BirthdayG) Black and Tan: A Crime of Fashion; Lassie Did a Bad, Bad Thing; Santa Barbarian Candidate J) The Case of the Missing Screenplay; The Case of the Stolen Sperm; The Case of the Grievous Clerical Error!K) The Truth in the Lye; The Foot in the Foreclosure; The Pathos in the Pathogens

Neel Mehta wrote:14. Identify the popular songs based on a unique two-word phrase within the song's lyrics. The song's year of release appears in parentheses. For this set, one or both of the words is a proper noun.

Fun fact about SWV, short for Sisters With Voices. The three members have the first names of Tamara, Leanne, and Cheryl, and they originally called themselves TLC. Unfortunately for them, there was already another emerging girl group named TLC who were already signed to a record label.

I don't know how many questions this thread has left, but we can't stop at 19.

20. For a future thread I was going to try to compose a list of 26 famous names that start and end with the same letter of the alphabet. This is as far as I got:

I thought the letter Z would be difficult to fill, but I quickly thought of two names, and they have quite a bit in common. Both are mixed-race actresses in their 20s. On TV, each appeared on a program that won multiple Emmys in September 2017. On the big screen, each has been cast in a role within Marvel's X-Men Universe.

Can you name the two actresses? Can you provide names for other missing letters on the list?

Barry F’in Gibb! I even heard a Bee Gees song yesterday and was unable to put it together. Terrific find; he’s on the list.

I struggled with the H Smith problem. None are famous enough. I’m open to replacing E and G as well (without using E.B. White, preferably).

I’m going to replace Nancy Wilson with a more famous person with a less common surname: Nicole Kidman. I should have known Keith Urban would find a way to be represented here. In matters of wordplay, never doubt Keith Urban.

rockgolf has one of the two Z___ ___z actresses. The second is less well known. She is taking on a significant role in a 2018 sequel to a very popular film that is set in the X-Men Universe but does not have “X-Men” in its title.

I’m all for Sporcle, but I’m not sure the list can be completed. Q and X might be impossible. I’m not optimistic about C, F, J, U, V, or Y right now, but it may be time for my last resort: Russian tennis players and NHL team rosters.

I think H (probably not a Smith) is possible. So are O, P, and W. If we included fictional characters, we could add a Hufflepuff witch, American Housewife son, and Dickens protagonist.

Here’s a follow-up question.

21. Zoe Isabella Kravitz was born In the late 1980s to a pair of famous parents: Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet. That means her birth was international news, so she has always had some level of fame. Also, Lenny Kravitz’s mother was actress Roxie Roker, probably best known for The Jeffersons. This makes Zoe a third-generation celebrity. Finally, Lisa Bonet divorced Lenny Kravitz in 1993 and married Jason Momoa in 2007, which means the new Aquaman from DC’s Justice League is Zoe’s stepfather.

In 2015, Zoe Kravitz appeared in the film Mad Max Fury Road, along with an actress who:

- made international news upon her birth in the late 1980s;- is a third-generation celebrity;- has had two previous stepfathers more widely known than Jason Momoa.

A couple of suggestions for the "starts and ends with the same letter" exercise (admittedly, they're not that great)...

For F, there's an actress named Fiona Dourif, who currently appears on Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Prior to that, she was probably best known for being in two of the many Child's Play sequels, which feature her Oscar-nominated father, Brad Dourif.

For P, you could use Patrick Stump, lead singer of Fall Out Boy, though his last name at birth included an H at the end.

The former is correct about #21. (Danielle) Riley Keough was born about 6 months after Zoe Kravitz. Her parents are Lisa Marie Presley — daughter of Elvis and Priscilla — and Danny Keough. When she was about 5-7 years old, Michael Jackson was her stepfather. When she was about 13-15, Nicolas Cage was her stepfather.

The latter read my mind about Christian LeBlanc and Vladimir Nabokov. I also found teen actress Olivia Rodrigo (though Olga Kurylenko is better for this) and Yasiin Bey — the former Mos Def — who may or may not stack up against Yevgeny Kaspersky. I can get on board with Harry Smith.

I'm not a Sporcle expert, but I would think the best format for this quiz would be click-to-match, where you list the 26 names alphabetically as options, and then provide the descriptions and ask to identify them. Seeing as how a group of us took days to formulate this list, I can't see users coming up with the names by themselves in 20 minutes.

Please keep an eye out for other possibilities.

22. I'm thinking of an actor who in real life is married to a woman with two Academy Awards. Recently he has acted in two unrelated projects: a feature-length comedy film released theatrically in 2015, and a TV network comedy that debuted in 2015 and is still on the air. In both projects, he is coupled with the same actress. And while she is not his real-life wife, she also has two Academy Awards. Name the actor.

22. I'm thinking of an actor who in real life is married to a woman with two Academy Awards. Recently he has acted in two unrelated projects: a feature-length comedy film released theatrically in 2015, and a TV network comedy that debuted in 2015 and is still on the air. In both projects, he is coupled with the same actress. And while she is not his real-life wife, she also has two Academy Awards. Name the actor.

rockgolf is correct. James Brolin and Dianne Wiest were also the parents of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler in the movie Sisters. I said "coupled" instead of "married" in my question because I stumbled across a Life in Pieces character description in Wikipedia that said their characters had divorced a long time ago to protest the institution of marriage on behalf of gay friends.

Unlike his real and fictional wives, James Brolin has never been nominated for an Academy Award, but his son has. Josh Brolin will be in next year's Deadpool 2, and his character Cable is presumably partnered with Domino, played by Zazie Beetz. It's all connected.

23. Speaking of Academy Award nominations, I was working on a question last year about actors and actresses who were nominated as children (under the age of 18) and later as adults. For the purposes of this question, the key date is when the nominations are announced.

So, for an example that doesn't work, Angela Lansbury filmed Gaslight when she was 17, but she was 18 when the film was released and 19 when she received a nomination. There are a handful of other actors and actresses who similarly received their first nomination as a young adult aged 18-20: Mickey Rooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keira Knightley, and Jennifer Lawrence were some I came across. None of them apply here.

In the end, I found one actor and three actresses who qualify. They are listed below in chronological order.

A) The actor and the first actress were nominated as teenagers for the same 1955 movie, both in supporting roles. It's unclear if he was 16 or 17 when the nominations were announced, but both were 17 on the day of the ceremony. He was nominated again for a supporting role five years later, at the age of 21 or 22. She was nominated twice as an adult lead actress, when she was 24 and 26. If it helps,

The lead actor in that 1955 movie was also a nominee for the same ceremony, but for a different movie.

B) The second actress is the only winner in this group of four, and she's won twice. She was nominated in a supporting role at the age of 14, and then as a lead when she was 26, 29, and 32.

C) The third actress can, theoretically, catch up to the second actress. She was nominated in a supporting role at the age of 13, and then as a lead when she was 21. Her second nomination, announced in January 2016, prompted this question.

Neel Mehta wrote:B) The second actress is the only winner in this group of four, and she's won twice. She was nominated in a supporting role at the age of 14, and then as a lead when she was 26, 29, and 32.

C) The third actress can, theoretically, catch up to the second actress. She was nominated in a supporting role at the age of 13, and then as a lead when she was 21. Her second nomination, announced in January 2016, prompted this question.

I'm sure she didn't get any sleep waiting for the announcement of that second nomination.

A) The actor and the first actress were nominated as teenagers for the same 1955 movie, both in supporting roles. It's unclear if he was 16 or 17 when the nominations were announced, but both were 17 on the day of the ceremony. He was nominated again for a supporting role five years later, at the age of 21 or 22.

grodney, gwynn1984, and rockgolf picked apart that question like a team.

I think I'm out of quickie questions.

I had some loose thoughts about listing non-sequel movies that reunite a lead actor and a lead actress (like Runaway Bride, or The Door in the Floor, or even Assassin's Creed), but lead acting can be subjective and IMDb is erratic in its credit listings. More importantly, would you even recognize any reunion besides Runaway Bride? Who would remember that Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger made Nadine and reunited 17 years later? Bill knows that Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard did Macbeth together, but would he even draw upon that knowledge for a question about Assassin's Creed? This ventures out of puzzle solving and into mind reading.

I also wondered how many automobile models share a name with NASA vehicles. I thought it was interesting that all parts of the phrase "Land Rover Discovery" were relevant to space exploration, and that the Mitsubishi Endeavor and Space Shuttle Endeavour were both retired in 2011. But I couldn't formulate a good question.

I thought about how Lisa Bonet has a famous spouse and a famous ex-spouse who are, to some extent, from different walks of life. I was reminded of John McEnroe's 2002 memoir, where I knew that he was once married to Tatum O'Neal, but learned that he is now married to singer Patty Smyth. Maybe collect a list of famous ex-spouses in Group A and current famous spouses in Group B, and match them up? Sounds like a Sporcle quiz, maybe.

Finally, I discovered that Walter Matthau was born Walter Matthow, which would have solved my W problem for Question #20 if he hadn't changed his surname.

Neel Mehta wrote:Bill knows that Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard did Macbeth together, but would he even draw upon that knowledge for a question about Assassin's Creed?

No, I wouldn't have known Assassin's Creed. But I just read a plot summary on Wikipedia, and came up with this:

"In what movie does Marion Cotillard convert Michael Fassbender into an assassin in medieval Europe, causing him to have hallucinations of blood and a vision of a genealogical line spanning distant generations?"

I believe the earliest recorded use of the word "assassination" (in that form) is from Shakespeare's Macbeth, so there's a nice synergy here.

Bill wrote:"In what movie does Marion Cotillard convert Michael Fassbender into an assassin in medieval Europe, causing him to have hallucinations of blood and a vision of a genealogical line spanning distant generations?"

Wow. That's... pretty good. Admittedly, I would not have come up with this; multiple meanings are more in your wheelhouse. Maybe there's a way to repurpose other reunion movies this way and make a new thread.

We build lists, but I don't know how effective this board can be for collaborating on questions. Generally, every question or puzzle that is posted is already processed and complete. While I have maybe three new non-quickie threads of usable material for the rest of the year, I have a few more discarded ideas.

Like Dead Again, it features Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh (Two Hamlets). But Jacobi is playing the valet Masterman, the same role John Gielgud played (by a different name, but based on the same character from the novel) in the 1974 film. Therefore, any collaboration between Gielgud and Jacobi can be added to the list, including Branagh's Hamlet and the 1979 film The Human Factor.